no input sound?

[geneweygandt]

to answer both: i believe i have the latest drivers. perhaps not. This set-up is only a few weeks old and I'd been using it successfully since mid-September. This problem just arose "out of the blue'' a couple days ago.

The M-Audio profire interface shows in both System Pref's and Audacity Pref's

[bgravato]

So when you select it on Audacity's preferences what does actually happens then? Do you get a flat (silent) line when recording from it?

[geneweygandt]

Exactly. Tho' I just brought all my gear to work ( I'm an actor in the first Nat'l tour of the B'way musical "Wicked"), and our sound guy offered to look at this again. He'd previously suggested that the way in which I shut down Audacity and the Mac Book (and therefore, M-Audio Profire, since it's powered thru the computer) was what made the difference. That worked briefly. Today, having futzed with things for a couple hours to no avail, we opened it up and away it went. recording. no problems. I wonder if it's worth un-installimg and re-installing Audacity. The problem seems to be unrelated to any particular event, command, click, adjustment, change in settings, etc.

Thanx again for help in solving this riddle.

[bgravato]

I don't think uninstalling and reinstalling audacity will make any difference (specially because that will keep the preferences file and that is actually what may make a difference...). There are instruction on the wiki on how to reset the preferences. But I don't believe that will make a difference either, since it's a problem that comes and goes without you making any change to audacity's preferences.

I'm more lean to believe that's either an hardware problem, or a driver related problem...

When you get the flat line try opening the mac's sound preferences at the same time and see if you get anything on the monitoring level for the mixer.

[geneweygandt]

i don't get anything on the mixer Control panel. But then it "magically" re-appears an hour or a day later.

[bgravato]

i don't get anything on the mixer Control panel. But then it "magically" re-appears an hour or a day later.

That just proves that it's not an audacity problem... If the system can't see it, then Audacity can't see it either...

Did you do any OS-X upgrade lately? Also check the cables, if you have other firewire cable, try switching the cable. It could be a bad connection problem, either on the cable, or any of the connectors. Can also be a sign of hardware failure. There are many possible causes for this... If you have the chance try using it on another mac and see if it happens too.

Try connecting and disconnecting the mixer several times and check if it's always detected by the system or if sometimes it fails. See if you can find a pattern in which you can reproduce the failure.